Donald Trump plans to ban the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from funding science, and “overhaul” its use of science from outside groups, according to a Monday report published in Axios.
The EPA is the agency charged with protecting America’s clean air and water, and under former President Barack Obama, it took significant steps to combat climate change.
Axios reporters Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen say they got a “sneaky peek” at the Trump transition team’s action plan for the agency. They did not publish the full plan, but summarized it and included this key excerpt:
“EPA does not use science to guide regulatory policy as much as it uses regulatory policy to steer the science. This is an old problem at EPA. In 1992, a blue-ribbon panel of EPA science advisers that [sic] ‘science should not be adjusted to fit policy.’ But rather than heed this advice, EPA has greatly increased its science manipulation.”
